I arrived nearly 2 weeks in London and was planning to get a phone fast but realized one needed a bank account to have one, and this takes some time.

I could have taken a pay-on-the-go phone, but thought, “better just to wait, I can survive a few days without a cell phone”. I can, this is confirmed but along the way I also realized how my perception of the city changed. When I go and meet people, I always have this worry that I might be late, or they might and they won’t be able to call me. I could go to a public phone but it is as if the phone booths don’t seem efficient anymore.

I went to this meeting in Hampstead and I got lost and was late. There were no public phones around. I had a few seconds of frustration and then I thought, “I’ll get there when I get there”… I was 20 minutes late and apologized. It was OK but I don’t think the person I was meeting could really picture someone without a cell phone.

What does all this tell us? How connected, technology dependent we are. I guess so. It also shows the materiality of these connections - cell phone, public phones, etc. More deeply I realized that I had this mix feeling of being alone, not being able to talk or text anyone, and a sense of freedom. Text messages are often these tags we send to each other, sharing our perceptions, waving at the other. They create a second layer of space. Yet, once this habit is put on hold, there’s a sense of freedom, even maybe adventure to walk in the city “on your own”. From being “disconnected” I became “unconnected”.

al

Here is an interesting essay by one of our blog members, Laura Forlano (published on Urban Omnibus) and how work and work practices have evolved and its implications for space, and for the design of cities.

http://urbanomnibus.net/2009/06/work-and-the-open-source-city/

Two points that I’d like to highlight in Laura’s article:

1.Laura highlights the tension between “the ways in which these emergent forms of organizing are deeply embedded in physical places and, at the same time, enabled by new technologies such as laptops and wireless networks.” This leads me to the more general discussion that is taking place in organizational studies on the role of materiality (boundary objects, space, etc.). It also highlights the point discussed at length on this blog on the merging, intertwining between physical and virtual space. Last, it is important to note that these new forms of organizing, sometimes described as virtual forms of organizing are not immaterial - just think of the laptops and the wireless networks!

2.  I found the anecdote on Laura’s experience in Japan really interesting. First of all, it reminded me of some of Pico Iyer’s descriptions of his life in Japan. Second, and more importantly, it leads to the question of the “nature” of technology. Even if we agree on the socially constructed nature of technology, we often still assume its cultural neutrality. Here as my work on videoconference also led me to discover (but unfortunately not investigage further) technology can be seen as a cultural lens - as it has been shown to be a social lens. This of course raises issues for researchers… all this work on informal interactions and innovation and creativity, and the role of space, does it make sense in all societies? in all cultures? what does it mean for global organizations?

thanks Laura for this great essay which raises so many important questions,

al

Hi,

just read an interesting article, My Living Room, in the Urban Omnibus by James Reeves, writer and designer.

James Reeves describes his perception of New York as he has just moved to Helsinski and that leads him to reflect of what makes him feel comfortable in New York and what is different in Helsinki. He highlights how cities, places in general (and our perceptions of it) emerge from structures, material dimensions (size of the blocks, street labels, stoops vs. court yards, etc.) but also social affordances - which includes mores and practices: cheap food, stores open all night long, etc. in NY which allows a certain life style and a certain type of interactions, and defines your personal space in a different way - your apartment is not the walls of the space you rent, but it extends out in the street. It reminded me my friend John Klima who always told me that “the city was his kitchen”.

Reeves notes:

“There are probably just as many people who prefer a city like Helsinki over New York, so perhaps it’s easier to tackle the question from another direction: is a personal connection to one’s environment simply a function of time and familiarity, or is it possible to arrive in a new city and, after taking a look at its buildings and establishments, immediately have a gut feeling that says, “Yes, this feels good. I could get comfortable here”? ”

I guess this article also touches me as I’m moving soon from NY after 3 1/2 years and my walks through Brooklyn and Manhattan take another dimension. I could empathize with his feelings as he’s reflecting on the places he knows, his routines as I feel the same when I go down Smith Street in the morning, stop by at Victory to get my coffee, or bike up to Prospect Park. Like Reeves I feel like I might not have taken enough photos and I do take some. My next stop is not Helsinski, but London - more exciting than Helsinksi many might say. I’ll tell you more in a couple of months.

I guess these issues can also be linked to the different ways people experience online spaces. We had lunch with two friends yesterday and we were discussing social networking platforms and other online tools. Two of us did not feel comfortable with facebooks and the type of interactions it supported but we loved skype which we perceived as a one-on-one communication tool which allowed us both fast (”peripheral” in some ways in the sense of “peripheral vision”)  and long (in-depth) interactions with people we know and like… More to be discussed here.

al

During the fall, Anne-Laure invited me to become a member of this blog. I agreed. And life was as complex as ever, and I did not get around to thinking about this until flying to California (I live in Connecticut) for Thanksgiving. I printed out the postings and began working through them from the start. Very thought-provoking. Lots of notes. Not enough time. So I continued the effort over Christmas, with additional posts of course. More thoughts. In January I explained the situation to Anne-Laure who encouraged me to make a contribution. And just about the point that I was going to post, I noticed that all I had been looking at were the posts, and none of the comments. Well, that stopped me cold. As did work, and the pressures of life. I had to miss the opening of the installation, and feared that I would miss the whole thing.

So finally, I set aside a day - this Monday -, and Lynne (my wife) and I headed into “The City” to have lunch with Anne-Laure and experience the installation before it was only a memory. And so I found myself walking into the space. And enjoying it immensely.

And then it occurred to me that I had not been worried about entering the space even though much had already gone on there and I was clearly not “up to speed.” But in contrast, I had been seriously blocked about just entering the blog without having “done my homework” - reading what had gone before. What was the difference?

Possibly it was the fact that my entry into the installation was understood (by me, and the culture I live in) to not carry any expectation that I know what was happening. Walk into a space, and it is assumed that you will be able to join in even if it takes some effort to feel out the scene, align with what’s happening, and then engage. And this expectation is based on the reality that the hjstory of the preceding activity has not been is captured and made available by the space. In contrast, all that has gone before in a blog is available. And so feeling out, and aligning before engaging is a much taller task.

A second reason that when I walked into the installation, I could see who I was engaging, I could evolve my interactions with them with awareness of the effect that I was having. I could limit my interaction to one or a few at a time, I could make “turns at talk” suit the immediate and local situation and correspondents; I could practice “recipient design.”  In contrast, in the blog, Without reading everything, or at least a lot, I could not know who my recipients were. Indeed, with lurkers, even reading would not help. I was flying blind, interacting without any sense of the “audience” and their purpose.

Thirdly, in the installation I knew why I was there. I wanted to see the embodiment of a word-based virtual space.  I was aware of the difficulties and a-priori non-alignments of the installation space and the virtual words-space, and was there to experience the installation as a provocation around the metaphor of space. But with the blog, I was not so sure why I was there - other than that Anne-Laure had invited me. And this was less about the subject matter - it was the same as the installation - and more about the genre. For in truth, as all the above shows, I am not at all competent in the the dance that is participating in blogs.

So my opening thought is this: spaces built with words have accessible history, and that can be understood by newbies to imply something very different that is understood by experienced bloggers - namely, that you are responsible for everything that is there. Instead, Anne-Laure tells me that you have already discussed the sense that a blog is (like) a party - A Blog Party - something that you can enter into and accelerate into. It seems like an excellent metaphor.

And so here am I, late to the party, and looking to accelerate into whatever is happening.

Thanks to one of my students,  I read this recent NY Time article reviewing a book by Andrew Lih, The Wikipedian Revolution and compares Wikepedia to a city (referring also to the History in the City by Lewis Mumford):

“[…] Like a city, Wikipedia is greater than the sum of its parts; for example, the random encounters there are often more compelling than the articles themselves. The search for information resembles a walk through an overbuilt quarter of an ancient capital. You circle around topics on a path that appears to be shifting. Ultimately the journey ends and you are not sure how you got there.Wikipedia articles can send you down unlikely alleyways in two ways. First, there are links that direct you to the same article in another language, a trippy experience that sheds light on a culture. Spend time in German Wikipedia, and you find jazz musicians likeThelonious Monk with articles far longer than those written in their own language; you may also come upon odd areas of deep interest, like “pecherei,” the extraction of resin from trees — no English equivalent provided — and 15 different tools needed for the job.Second, at the bottom of most articles, there are the categories — impromptu neighborhoods, or perhaps civic organizations, that bind together the virtual encyclopedia. […] 

Mumford elaborates: “Even before the city is a place of fixed residence, it begins as a meeting place to which people periodically return: the magnet comes before the container, and this ability to attract nonresidents to it for intercourse and spiritual stimulus no less than trade remains one of the essential criteria of the city, a witness to its essential dynamism, as opposed to the more fixed and indrawn form of the village, hostile to the outsider.”The marvel of Wikipedia — and cities — is that all the intercourse and spiritual stimulus don’t make living there impossible. Rather, they are exactly what makes living there possible.  […]”

Of course I found the comparison between the virtual space of Wikipedia and the physical space of a city a compelling comparison. I also found interesting the comments on the role of social practices (trust, behavior, etc.) which once again highlights the discussion we had about the intertwining between social and physical spaces. Last, I could not be insensitive to the description of the journey through Wikipedia similar to a journey through a maze!

al

Really happy to have made it to the centre of the maze to experience BSWW. The space that has been built is a beautiful and comfortable space. With a wonderful soundtrack too. Al and Aileen, it’s fantastic milena

Fascinating.

As I am in this physical space I contribute to it.

Post-it notes for neighbors: post-it notes to share knowledge and build a sense of community

I’ve just read about an interesting project Post-it-notes-for-neighbors by Cathy Chang, an artist, designer and urban planner on the Urban Omnibus.

Cathy Chang noticed that people use public spaces to post information to share with others. She also noticed that people don’t know each other (in the line of the Bowling alone argument of Putnam).

Starting from the statement:

“Residents are brimming with local knowledge, from the trivial to the empowering: the best slice of pizza, the nearest place to donate clothes, the latest news on the power outage, the lowdown on yesterday’s community board meeting. All of these fragments of local information are dispersed amongst a population within a defined area, and lots of people would benefit from the knowledge and resources of others“, Cathy Chang asks:

“For one, how can our public spaces be better places for sharing information? How can we harness the collective knowledge of a neighborhood?”

To explore this question, she created a project “I lived” where post-it notes to fill in where posted on different windows of stores in Carroll Garden and Cobble Hill where people tell about how long they’ve been living in a neighborhood and how much they pay for their place.

I like this project which again is an attempt to “make things visible” - information about people’s private lives. More generally, it’s about information sharing and building a sense of community in a physical space - a neighborhood. Reading about it I could not help thinking of my study of public online forums on knowledge management…

Last, it’s about creating this sense of community through messages, post-it notes, stuck on public spaces.

al

Hi,

Milena was telling me yesterday that she found interesting that the blog “seems to be taking a turn for physical space…and urban environments which is really interesting too”.
My first reply was that I liked the idea that the discussion was evolving and taking its own path. I also highlighted that for me while issues about physical space were coming up, it did not mean that the “virtual space” topic has disappeared, but it was discussions about online communication, mobility, etc.

Moreover, the two last posts by Yasmine and Claudia were for me about practices, perceptions, and not so much physical space per se: How do you keep a sense of home (place, identity) when you’re away, on the way? What is home if it’s not the physical house that one might associate with home?

Yet, Milena’s comment made me reflect on the evolution of our conversation and I wondered whether we have taken another path (which is not a problem in itself) forgetting the original question:

How to interpret the metaphor of the virtual space that so many people use? is it a metaphor or an oxymoron? Are some of the affordances of physical spaces (affordances which are not only material but also social) reenacted in online (virtual) spaces? Or do these spaces have completely different affordances / dimensions? (more…)

In the spirit of Paris Invisible (see February 6), here is another attempt to provide a “thick description” of interactions in public spaces.

A while ago, Yasmine posted about an interesting project “Touching the city”  by her friend Alexandra Ginsberg is showing her work done in collaboration with Oliver Froome-Lewis (see June 19, 2007):

Touching the City is a design research unit that explores the ways in which we interact with the city. Observing the private life of small public spaces, we consider and exchange views on their potential and make proposals for their transformation.